Erik Kettenburg from over at digistump.com has come up with his fourth Kickstarter campaign named ‘Oak’. Oak is a tiny Arduino Compatible development board with built-in Wi-Fi and a secure cloud-powered platformcalled RootCloud (online IDE, REST API, and Dashboard) which makes it easy to create cloud-connected electronic devices, projects, and products. Oak is fully Arduino […]

David John Barker (The guy behind my favourite programming IDE Swordfish Basic) has started up a Kickstarter campaign today where you can pledge for some StickyBUG’s! But what are StickyBUGs? Good question, but first some background information. Arduino is a great versatile electronics / programming platform that allows you to plug in various shields for […]

I am a big fan of the old Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. And perhaps one of my favourite games on that system is Super Mario Bros. (image reference: http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/usgamer/NGL1—Super-Mario-Bros.png) So a few years ago I decided to make my own version of this Nintendo classic but restrict it to just 64 pixels on an […]

Tiny Screen is a small OLED display with a resolution of 96 x 64 pixels and a colour depth of 16bits which gives you 65,536 different colours. The display measures just 0.96″ diagonally which I guess makes sense as to why they call it tiny! The tiny screen is made by the same people that […]

I am a huge fan of LED matrix displays and have searched the internet far and wide for the best prices. After years of searching I have finally found the best deals on LED matrix displays. The website is: http://www.glareled.com/productclass_51.html However you can deal directly with James by sending him an email of what you […]

I have just recently launched my latest Kickstarter campaign which can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1897710270/usb-meter-pro-monitor-and-accelerate-your-usb-char?ref=category_location What Can The USB Meter Pro Do? The USB Meter Pro Can: Measure the charging speed of your mobile devices. Increase the charging speed of your mobile devices* (See below for full details). Check the ‘health’ of your USB ports […]

The great info on this page comes all thanks to bitfogav from the forum. Bitfogav took the time to do an excellent write up on how to add new 3D patterns into the Diptrace 3D model library. If you have never used Diptrace before, I highly recommend that you check it out here: http://diptrace.com/downloads/download-diptrace/ There […]

I stumbled upon another microcontroller based handheld video game device tonight while checking out the Arduino contest over at instructables.com The MAGPI was made by instructables user zippy314 and his son. It uses minimal hardware but the results are great, the first game in their youtube video reminds me of a lunar lander / asteroids […]

Every now and again I like to do a search on Kickstarter for keywords like Arduino or Microcontroller, just to see what comes up. Today I found a really cool looking project that is compatible with Arduino and has an inbuilt OLED screen. You could make your own little games on the device, or perhaps […]

I have made a whole heap of electronics and programming tutorials over the years and I thought it was about time that I let you guys know of a sure fire way to smash your smartphone’s glass digitiser. It’s quite simple really, when you’re working with some wood, nails and a hammer – be sure […]

Now this is a project that I can get excited about! Kevin from over at bateske.com has come up with the coolest credit card sized gaming device I have ever seen! I thought my credit card sized 64 Pixel LED game system was cool. The Arduboy is not only the same length and width as a […]

I am working on another new project (surprise, surprise…) where I am measuring current of different devices and sending it to an LED matrix. I am using a PIC18F13K50 microcontroller for the job and coding in Swordfish Basic. I was in the initial stages of testing the led matrix display and I ran some simple […]

My 5 and 4 year old boys very much enjoy playing games from my retro video game collection with Super Mario Bros being their favourite. So I did a little searching on the internet for a Super Mario Bros level editor and well, I found one. It is called Super Mario Bros. Game Builder and […]

Note: Downloads at the bottom of this page. What is the DigiPixel? The DigiPixel is an open source Arduino and Digispark compatible shield with a 64 pixel RGB LED display and six buttons. The DigiPixel comes with it’s own Arduino library, graphic converter and demo sketches (as seen in the video) to help you get […]

I have been contacted by a couple of people who have made their own version of Retroball which is great to see! Firstly, cnribbens from the forum posted some details of his retroball build. It started out as a Super Pong Table (which was my original version of Retroball) this version required that you make […]

I am proud to introduce my latest project – my twin boys! Joel Thomas Slattery and Isaac James Slattery. They are wonderful little boys and were born on Friday 25th October 2013 at 10:20am and then 10:21am. I have designed many electronic projects over the years which involve countless hours of circuit design, coding, testing […]

I was doing a little bit of searching on the internet for how I might go about drawing a simple circle on an LED matrix. I then stumbled upon an excellent website which had some great information on using Sin and Cos to not only draw circles but also for making game mechanics work. For […]

I came across this really cool site that is an Amiga Workbench Simulator that runs right in your browser. I grew up with a commodore 64 and then later moved onto an Amiga 500 so I have very fond memories of Amiga Workbench. However, Amiga slowly died out with their last major system (I think) […]

Thanks goes to ChuckT from the forum for this one. I have used microchips range of Lithium ion battery charger chips before (very low cost and a tiny form factor). They have proven to be a great way of charging 3.7V lithium batteries in my little LED game based devices. The problem though was that […]

I stumbled upon this coffee table while looking for a particular video on youtube. It is a 10×16 RGB LED matrix display made into a coffee table. It has a number of built in games but the reason I wanted to post it was because it comes complete with a game just like one that […]

I was browsing kickstarter and came across this pretty nifty little gadget that (kinda) works like a kinect sensor but can plug into a whole heap of different devices (although it looks to be mainly designed for the iPad – it includes an SDK to be used with Xcode. One of the impressive feature for […]

Back in 2008 I made a very simple Space Invaders type game on an 8×8 RG LED matrix display. Everything was represented by a single pixel (I.E. the player, the bad guys, the UFO up the top and even the barriers). It was still a playable game but I have found a better LED version! […]

The Game of Light is a great Arduino project that has a 64 pixel X 64 pixel RG LED matrix. This is a project that I especially like because it plays retro games! The graphics are quite a bit better than any LED game that I have made (infact, it’s much higher resolution than anything […]

I wanted to share with you a fantastic website dedicated to electronics and programming – www.digital-diy.com The guys over at digital-diy.com have been a great help to me on numerous occasions when it has come to fixing a problem in my code with my projects over the years. Infact, it was due to digital-diy that […]

I have been following Pastor Saeed’s story for a while now. Basically Pastor Saeed has been sentenced to eight years in one of the worlds worst prisons. Evin Prison in Iran. His crime is being a Christian. Pastor Saeed has been in Evin prison for almost a year now and in that time he has […]

I thought i’d share a link to a retro video game site that I made before I got into microcontroller programming. The site has not been updated in years but I keep it there for nostalgic purposes. I thoroughly enjoyed making the site and learned a lot from making it. I had a very active […]

GBCartRead is an arduino based original Gameboy cartridge reader made by Alex at inside gadgets. I am a huge fan of retro video games and have quite a collection of gameboy consoles and cartridges myself. I have wanted to make a cart reader / writer for a while now but have just not had the […]

Tindie is a site I stumbled upon that allows electronic designers (like me!) to sell my projects online through a site of like-minded electronics enthusiasts. You can also browse and buy various projects that other people have made. Click HERE to check it out.

Bitfogav (a resident forum member) has come up with a great shield for the new Firewing platform. I especially like this shield because it’s just the sort of thing that I would make! Click HERE to check it out.

An indiegogo project that aims to put the power and ease of arduino into your hands for as little as $9. This project is compatible with the Arduino Leonardo board. (Source – bitfogav from the forums) Click HERE to check it out.

A Kickstarter project that combines a dual signal oscilloscope, dual signal spectrum analyser, function generator and more into one device. You can access the Red Pitiya via any web browser on practically any web enabled device. (Source – Kickstarter) Click HERE to check it out.

Most of my electronic projects revolve around making games. (Retro type video games that you may have seen in the 1980’s). So therefor I need some way of controlling the games – normally by way of push buttons. I used to connect up some push buttons to a breadboard but it wasn’t the nicest solution. […]

I will be compiling some useful tips for you guys in this page to help with your Arduino projects. A faster way to read and write to / from digital pins. Have you noticed how slow reading and writing digitals pins is with the: digitalRead(); and digitalWrite(); functions? Well I sure have (and upon searching […]

I have been programming microcontrollers for about 6 years now and have mainly been using Microchip’s PIC range of microcontrollers. My favourite programming environment is Swordfish Basic. It is a pleasure to use however despite being around since (I think) 2007, it doesn’t have a very large user base. Arduino is a fantastic way […]

[bbp-forum-index] I stumbled across this great site when looking at how visitors came to my site. It’s a monthly online magazine dedicated to retro video games – and it’s fantastic! The site has been running since 1997 and is still going strong. One of my hobbies is also collecting retro video games (that’s why […]

I recently watched the Evolution vs God video which I felt was fantastic. Here is the video: Ray Comfort visits a number of universities and questions students and teachers from various fields. All those interviewed have faith in the evolutionary world view. ie, the world as we know it came about by natural processes […]

Firstly, A video of the display in action: I bought a 32×32 RGB Matrix display from China. Well more specifically it was from a helpful guy named James who works at www.wanzhouled.net I have searched the internet for the cheapest prices on Matrix displays and James is by far the cheapest. A 32×32 RGB Matrix was […]

How did we get here? Have you ever thought about how we got here? Have a look around, how amazing and intricate is this world that we live in. How amazing is the human body with all of it’s functions. We are the result of a well thought out and implemented plan by an amazing […]

Now first things first, I don’t recommend making your own 8×8 LED matrix out of individual LED’s (because it is very time consuming!) I do recommend purchasing yourself one (or more) of the 8×8 Bi-colour LED matrix displays off ebay. they are incredibly cheap and are very easy to use. I buy mine from sure […]

I was having a bit of a think about what to do with the sixth installment of this course. So what better than to add a keypad so that we can control what is displayed on the seven segment display. What you can expect to learn: How to interface a keypad to the microcontroller […]

Seven segment displays are extremely useful devices. We can quite easily drive one, two, three or more seven segment displays with just one microcontroller – we will start with just one so you can see how the circuit and code works, then we will build on that to get to four seven segment displays running […]

We’ll so far we have been using the microcontroller to make some nice LED’s flash and do pretty things. But what about using a couple of pins as inputs? That’s exactly what we will be covering in this module. This circuit has a left push-button and a right push-button. You press the left button to […]

Now that you have mastered making one LED flash, lets move onto using 8 LED’s. If you have ever seen the TV series Knightrider then you will already know what this circuit will do. Basically we have 8 LED’s connected to PORTB. We will program it in such a way so that each LED will […]

The LED flasher is basically the “Hello World” of microcontroller programming. It is a very good place to get started and even though this is just the beginning, you will still learn a whole heap of instructions. What you can expect to learn in this tutorial: How to connect the pickit 2 to your […]

Welcome to the first instalment of the PIC assembly tutorials. This set of tutorials is based around the ever popular PIC16F628A and PIC16F648A microcontrollers. We will be programming using assembly language for a number of reasons: Assembly is great fun and You can gain an excellent understanding of how the microcontroller works due to working […]

Pong style video games have been a favourite of many gamers since their inception back in the 1970’s. A simple two player game where each player is required to move their bat up and down the screen in order to intercept the oncoming ball to prevent it from getting past them. Who would have thought […]

I saw sparkfun make a similar table a few years back where they had multiple LED matrix screens connected together and put them into a table to play a four player game. I decided to come up with my own version and wanted to keep the cost down as low as possible. The result is […]

Once installed, this mod will allow you to select from various modes all by pressing the reset button – you are presented with feedback by a multicolour power light (RGB LED). When you first turn the console on you will be presented with a RED power light. This is telling you that you are running […]

The motivation behind this project was so that I could give a simple little gift to friends, family and neighbours that was unique (and inexpensive!) This little device measures just 3cm x 3cm x 2cm and is designed to hang on your Christmas tree just like any other ornament. When you switch it on, it […]

Reaction is quite a simple little game whereby you have to press a push button as quick as you can when the LED changes from RED to GREEN. The faster your reaction time the lower the number that will be displayed on the seven segment display. All the credit for this idea came from DJSPANKY one […]

Project Design by Gavin Wiggett – aka bitfogav Hi, first I would like to thank Brad for letting me use his site for my project and also praise him for all the hard work that he has put into this site and all of his amazing projects that he has shared with us. So welcome […]

I was selling these as a build it yourself kit but unfortunately I have run out. You can however build your own with all the information contained within this web page. You can download schematics, parts list and there are a number of games to try out also. Original Demo Video: Space Invaders Game: Stacy’s […]

This was my second attempt at making simple video games within a 64 pixel display. This time however, I used an RGB LED display rather than just an RG display. The circuit design is quite similar to the old 8×8 Game System, just a little more expanded. I quite enjoy the old retro video games […]

Welcome to the page on generating video signals with your pic microcontroller. Before we get started I would like to pass on thanks and credit to Rickard Gunee. I learned about generating video from his tutorial page. I have just made this page to give you some info in my own words and also to […]

The idea for experimenting with Analog to digital conversion came from an old Atari game – Grand Prix. The game was played with an analogue controller where you could twist the controller clockwise or anti-clockwise to guide the car through the race track. The car’s position is relative to where the controller is positioned which […]

Unfortunately this project did not work out as well as I had planned. I could not get it to do animations. It would happily display one individual frame but when I wanted it to scroll through a number of frames, I ran into all sorts of problems. Having said that, I did come up with […]

The great race is a very addictive and easy to build little game. It is made from readily available and inexpensive components and was actually the first game I designed with a microcontroller. The idea of the game is to drive your car (the red dot) to the left and right of screen to avoid […]

This was my first attempt at an RGB LED POV Display. POV stands for persistence of vision. This type of project works with our eyes relatively ‘slow’ refresh rate. When we flash some LED’s with certain information and then spin those LED’s, our eyes don’t see the fast flashes, but rather sees a complete picture […]

This game is based on the 1985 Nintendo classic – Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros is one of my all time favourite games. I liked it so much in fact that I decided to make my own version, but restricting the graphics to just 64 pixels! I have given it the name ”Super Pixel Bros” […]

This is an iOS app that I originally made to help students in my electronics classes to better understand the inner workings of various BJT circuits. I will often ask the students “What will happen to the Q-point if Rb was to increase?” or “What if I replaced the transistor with one that had a lower gain?” Often […]

The PICnDuino is an Open Source dual microcontroller development platform built into a tiny direct to USB device. It is compatible with both Arduino and Amicus18 which have an already established fan base giving you instant access to hundreds of tutorials, code examples, project designs and support forums. For the more adventurous users, you can even use […]

Tonight I decided to do a few experiments with an 18F2550 and PLL settings to see exactly what effect it would have on the operation of the microcontroller. More specifically, I just wanted to fix firmly in my head what the data sheet was telling me and also to see how long an instruction took […]

I made mention a few weeks ago in the forum that I was working on some VGA experiments. Well, I decided to see if I could get an old Nintendo Gameboy from 1989 working on a VGA monitor. This page documents my experiments and progress in achieving this goal. As I make more progress, I […]